Turning Television Into A Simple Tapestry

Teleknitting, the brainchild of Moscow artist [vtol], is an interesting project. On one hand, it doesn’t knit anything that is useful in a traditional sense, but on the other, it attempts the complex task of deconstructing broadcasted media into a simpler form of information transmission.

Teleknitting’s three main components are the processing and display block — made up of the antenna, Android tablet, and speaker — the dyeing machine with its ink, sponges, actuators, and Arduino Uno, and the rotating platform for the sacrificial object. A program running on the tablet analyzes the received signal and — as displayed on its screen — gradually halves the number of pixels in the image until there is only one left with a basic representation of the picture’s colour. From there, thread passes over five sponges which dye it the appropriate colour, with an armature that responds to the broadcast’s volume directing where the thread will bind the object.

Functionally, Teleknitting receives TV signals and converts them into a one-dimensional thread that slowly ensnares a chosen object. [vtol]’s aim is to reinterpret the data we have beaming all around us into a different medium entirely — a different kind of data stream, if you will. Teleknitting is perhaps a compelling suggestion that we are — literally — far too wrapped up in the media that surrounds us 24/7 and that sometimes we need to slow down or reduce the amount of data we take in that isn’t useful.

If you’re looking for some more practical knitting hacks, we’ve featured a few knitting projects on Hackaday before — such as this open-source knitting machine, or how to interface with one in order to have it make pixel art.

Now if it actually reconstructed an image with that yarn inking method I *might*, be tempted to take an interest. After about the third random bleep I went back to listening to a scratched Philip Glass LP being played backwards at 16 rpm while staring at 100 yards of toilet roll preprinted random with images of Donald Trump being wiped repeatedly across the backsides of 100 Damian Hurst pickled cows. Now that’s what I call Art.

While grim looking women with asymmetrical haircuts throw ice cream at you that is grabbed from big golden buckets that are suspended from the ceiling by strong ropes made of human hair, which made you think pretentious thoughts about the human condition? That kind of art?